This invention relates to a conveyor assembly for reorienting items thereon for the controlled charging of carriages of a sorting apparatus situated at the discharge end of the conveyor assembly. The assembly includes a conveyor which is associated with a device for aligning items on the conveyor prior to their transfer to the sorting apparatus.
A conveyor assembly of the above-outlined type is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,682. The assembly described therein includes an obliquely oriented conveyor belt having fingers which are arranged in an L-shaped pattern and which are lowerable between the parallel, partial belts of the conveyor belt. For aligning a package or similar item, the fingers are raised until they project beyond the upper surface of the oblique belt. The item placed on the oblique belt runs up the fingers and is aligned and stopped thereby. After the item is aligned, the fingers are lowered by means of a drive mechanism positioned underneath the oblique belt. The aligned package is continued to be advanced in an aligned orientation by the oblique conveyor belt in the conveying direction and transferred to the carriage of the sorting apparatus. The alignment of relatively large items has the advantage that the division of the sorting apparatus may be held at a small value and, accordingly, high output values may be achieved.